Meteorites transferred water to earth, new study finds! (photos)

Jan, 19 2018
Author: Thema Newsroom

It happened during first 2 million years

A new study of a rare basaltic meteorite called angrites suggests that volatiles, which are elements with relatively low boiling points such as water, could have been brought to our planet by meteorites during the first two million years of the solar system.
Since elements such as water and carbon are essential ingredients to life on Earth, researchers are keen to know when they arrived on our planet.
“We’re looking at as many meteorite parent bodies as possible right now to figure out where they were in the early solar system and how much water they had,” says Adam Sarafian, a recent doctoral graduate in the department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We’re trying to build a map of the very early inner solar system. Where was the water, where was it going and where did it come from?”
Sarafian is the lead author of a paper describing the findings of the angrite study in the journal Geochimica and Cosmochimica Acta.